{"title":"Uganda’s ruling coalition and the 2021 elections: change, continuity and contestation","authors":"Moses Khisa","doi":"10.1080/17531055.2023.2246761","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/17531055.2023.2246761","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Since coming to power, President Museveni has consistently stitched together disparate actors and representatives of divergent constituencies in his ruling coalition. This became especially necessary as his rule grew less popular and more precarious. This article argues that the nature of the ruling coalition reflects the structure of politics and menu of priorities for the incumbent. The political landscape shapes composition of the ruling coalition, which mirrors realignment of social forces, interest groups and balance of power. This article casts a critical spotlight on two phases – 1986–2005 and 2006 to the present – placing coalition dynamics and the 2021 elections in the broader context of the shift in Uganda’s overall political landscape. Drawing on qualitative data sources including elite interviews and newspaper reports, and with specific focus on cabinet appointments, the article shows that electoral calculations and regime survival considerations are the biggest drivers of Museveni’s ruling coalition changes and composition.","PeriodicalId":46968,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Eastern African Studies","volume":"17 1","pages":"325 - 343"},"PeriodicalIF":1.4,"publicationDate":"2023-04-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41723787","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The frontier on the doorstep: development and conflict dynamics in the southern rangelands of Kenya","authors":"K. Mkutu","doi":"10.1080/17531055.2023.2227938","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/17531055.2023.2227938","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Rural parts of Kenya are undergoing or are expected to undergo massive social-ecological change as a result of the government’s ambitious development agenda driven by infrastructure and extraction. The pastoralist rangelands near the dormant Mount Suswa volcano in Narok, Kajiado and Nakuru counties have witnessed the creation of a modern railway and a geothermal project, and plans for further geothermal developments are expected together with a large inland port and industrial park. Other scholars identify structural, discursive, organisational and directly violent frontier characteristics which occur at the interface of two social orders and are well recognised in parts of northern Kenya. This article considers how these phenomena play out in a frontier inhabited by marginalised pastoralists but ‘on the doorstep’ of Nairobi and other urban centres. It concludes that most frontier phenomena are also present in marginalised areas closer to the centre and as such, the frontier is not necessarily geographically determined. However, formations of violence and dynamics of policing are different to the north and proximity to the economic and political centre makes a difference, allowing the state to remain more in control.","PeriodicalId":46968,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Eastern African Studies","volume":"17 1","pages":"22 - 39"},"PeriodicalIF":1.4,"publicationDate":"2023-04-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46640976","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"From ruins and rubble: promised and suspended futures in Kenya (and beyond)","authors":"Uroš Kovač, Anna Lisa Ramella","doi":"10.1080/17531055.2023.2245263","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/17531055.2023.2245263","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT In the first quarter of the twenty-first century, much future-making in Kenya is taking place in ruins of unfinished promising projects, failed capitalist enterprises, and decades of colonial and postcolonial exclusion and marginalization. When discussing future-making in Kenya specifically and Africa more generally, especially in the context of vision-driven developmentalist narratives that rely on visions of linear progress and growth, analysts and social scientists need to account for ways that futures emerge from ruins and rubble of undelivered and uncertain promises, collapsed industries, and colonial and postcolonial dispossession of land and rights. This article establishes the overarching argumentation and framing of the “Living with Ruins” special collection, outlines key theoretical concepts like ruination, infrastructuring, and future-making, and examines ruins and ruination in key economic and political domains that make claims to Kenya’s future: capitalist boom-and-bust economies, mega-scale infrastructure projects, and urban development. In all these domains, futures are emerging through assemblages of people’s everyday practices of maintenance and the ruins that surround them, complicating facile proclamations of Africa’s rising or abjection.","PeriodicalId":46968,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Eastern African Studies","volume":"17 1","pages":"141 - 164"},"PeriodicalIF":1.4,"publicationDate":"2023-04-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48077391","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Role of history in shaping perceptions of climate change in the alpine areas of Kenya","authors":"T. Downing, D. Olago, T. Nyumba","doi":"10.1080/17531055.2023.2237266","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/17531055.2023.2237266","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Climate change will have differential effects on communities around the world due to different vulnerabilities. Two climate-vulnerable areas in Kenya – Mount Elgon and Mount Kenya – were compared in this study to see how their differing histories may have impacted their inherent adaptive capacities. A literature review was used to outline the differences in the history of the two areas, and then perceptions on climate change and adaptive capacity were assessed with quantitative and qualitative methods, consisting of interviews, focus group discussions, and questionnaires. Two communities were considered for each mountain – an alpine community and a community living at the base of the mountain. Overall, there were broad similarities in how these communities viewed their environment and changes to that environment. However, there were nuanced differences in perceptions, which reflect the different geo-political histories. In general, both of the Mount Elgon communities had greater appreciation for ecosystem services, but lower perceptions of changes in those services. They were overall more optimistic for the future than the communities in Mount Kenya. These factors may be shaped by a history of closer cultural connection to the mountain in Mount Elgon, which has implications for future adaptation to climate change.","PeriodicalId":46968,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Eastern African Studies","volume":"17 1","pages":"101 - 120"},"PeriodicalIF":1.4,"publicationDate":"2023-04-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41990662","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The rise and fall of a Swahili tabloid in socialist Tanzania: Ngurumo newspaper, 1959–76","authors":"G. Roberts","doi":"10.1080/17531055.2023.2246762","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/17531055.2023.2246762","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT While historians of East Africa have examined the region’s rich print cultures in the era of decolonisation, they have viewed newspapers primarily in intellectual terms, rather than as businesses embedded in capital networks. Through the Asian-owned Tanzanian tabloid Ngurumo, this article examines the political economy of newspapers and printing during the time of decolonisation in Tanzania. It argues that Randhir Thaker’s printing firm played an essential yet overlooked role in sustaining nationalist expansion in the late 1950s, before then entering the newspaper market in a period marked by racial tensions. However, the same undercapitalised business model which allowed Ngurumo to become Tanzania’s most popular newspaper then constrained its ability to expand its operations. Ngurumo’s demise in the mid-1970s was not caused by direct government intervention, but by its lack of the infrastructural and financial support which sustained the state- and party-owned press through a time of economic hardship.","PeriodicalId":46968,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Eastern African Studies","volume":"17 1","pages":"1 - 21"},"PeriodicalIF":1.4,"publicationDate":"2023-04-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43924061","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Transition, transformation, and the politics of the future in Uganda","authors":"Sam Wilkins, Richard Vokes","doi":"10.1080/17531055.2023.2236848","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/17531055.2023.2236848","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT While the framing of the past remains a critical terrain of political discourse in Uganda, competing political visions oriented towards the future have emerged as equally salient as the country undergoes significant social and economic changes. Against the image of gridlock that characterises Ugandan politics after President Yoweri Museveni’s latest controversial re-election in 2021, the aim of this article is to highlight these currents of change and the political narratives of the future that have emerged to address them. We address these changes in three categories: the ways in which the NRM regime has re-embraced a securitised developmentalism, the demographic and economic changes that in some ways condition and force these shifts, and the changes to presidential politics relating to Museveni’s succession on both the NRM and opposition sides.","PeriodicalId":46968,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Eastern African Studies","volume":"17 1","pages":"262 - 279"},"PeriodicalIF":1.4,"publicationDate":"2023-04-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48148448","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"In the ruins of past forest lives: remembering, belonging and claiming in Katimok, highland rural Kenya","authors":"Léa Lacan","doi":"10.1080/17531055.2023.2231786","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/17531055.2023.2231786","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT This article explores how local inhabitants living near the Katimok Forest in Baringo County, Kenya, engage with the traces of their past embedded in the landscape, and refigure them into politically powerful ruins. Drawing on ethnographic and archival research, the study examines the traces left behind by former forest dwellers before they were relocated by colonial and post-colonial governments, and analyses the current residents’ interactions with these traces. The article shows that traces are mnemonic and affective devices that remind the local inhabitants of emotional stories of a lost past and foster a sense of belonging. In addition, former forest dwellers and their descendants use these traces as evidence and symbols of their belonging and suffering to demand recognition of their historical loss from current national authorities. By performing the traces as ruins of a lost past, claimants harness their political power. This study highlights the importance of considering forest politics in relation to affective and political engagements with the material landscape.","PeriodicalId":46968,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Eastern African Studies","volume":"17 1","pages":"186 - 206"},"PeriodicalIF":1.4,"publicationDate":"2023-04-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49146240","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Ranger/soldier: patterns of militarizing conservation in Uganda","authors":"Christopher Day, William D. Moreto, Riley Ravary","doi":"10.1080/17531055.2023.2235660","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/17531055.2023.2235660","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT\u0000 In recent years, several African states have increasingly militarized their wildlife authorities in response growing threats to protected areas (PAs) that come from a range of actors including hunters, poachers, and armed groups. As park rangers now face the overlapping challenges of conservation, law enforcement, and security in PAs, many are provided with paramilitary training, lethal weapons, and sophisticated equipment, often in conjunction with national armies and international actors. Much of the prevailing literature on “green militarization” has done much to advance our understanding of the potential negative consequences associated with the coercive roles of rangers in PAs, but often sidesteps the social, political, and organizational contexts in which park rangers operate. This article presents an interdisciplinary collaboration between anthropology, criminology, and political science that builds a multi-level analytical framework to examine patterns of militarization of the Uganda Wildlife Authority. It considers the political development of Uganda’s wildlife authorities over the longue durée, the attitudes of individual rangers vis-à-vis their coercive roles as agents of law enforcement, and the organization and behavior of rangers at the sub-national level as they engage communities adjacent to Mount Elgon National Park.","PeriodicalId":46968,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Eastern African Studies","volume":"17 1","pages":"57 - 78"},"PeriodicalIF":1.4,"publicationDate":"2023-04-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46834355","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Resisting imperial erasures: Matigari ruins and relics in Nairobi","authors":"Wangui Kimari","doi":"10.1080/17531055.2023.2231787","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/17531055.2023.2231787","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Building on ethnographic fieldwork and interdisciplinary theoretical approaches, this article historicizes poor urban settlements in Nairobi as ruins – the product of systemic ruination from the colonial period to the present. In so doing, it offers the provocation to think ‘slum’ dwellers as relics: remains of past/present conterminous ruins who are treated as subhuman hauntings of a foregone time and understood to be constituted by the decayed and unwanted material of city margins. In these embodiments they are perceived as ruining the city, even when they have been produced by longue durée political processes of ruination, captured by vernacular identities such as Matigari. Yet, as I show here, like unexpected relics, the inhabitants of poor urban settlements continue to insert vital bids for survival in city landscapes. And, in these layered movements, they act as mnemonic devices that bridge the oppressions of what are seen as separate times, while shedding light on often normalized colonial city and national governance processes.","PeriodicalId":46968,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Eastern African Studies","volume":"17 1","pages":"207 - 221"},"PeriodicalIF":1.4,"publicationDate":"2023-04-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44640443","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Authoritarian micro-politics: village chairpersons in NRM Uganda and the lessons of their 2018 re-election","authors":"Sam Wilkins","doi":"10.1080/17531055.2023.2237265","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/17531055.2023.2237265","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT In July 2018, the office of village chairperson (Local Council 1/LC1) was contested throughout Uganda in open elections for the first time in almost two decades. These offices, central to the National Resistance Movement’s (NRM) famed decentralisation project in its early years in power, continue to have immense significance in the daily lives of most Ugandans. While their long-awaited re-election provides a worthy focus of study in its own right, this article uses the occasion to test a broader set of claims about the evolution of village chairpersons under the NRM, and how variations in their exposure to competitive politics fits into a broader strategy of regime consolidation since 1986. Based on ethnographic research conducted between 2015 and 2017, the article will argue that LC1s should not necessarily be considered ‘illegitimate’ in the eyes of most citizens due to their long period without election before 2018, and that in many important respects they differ significantly from higher levels of local political office. Instead, it configures their place in the broader dominant party system, their main role in the maintenance of which is as symbolic as it is structural.","PeriodicalId":46968,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Eastern African Studies","volume":"17 1","pages":"344 - 362"},"PeriodicalIF":1.4,"publicationDate":"2023-04-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41449652","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}